The 1990's have been marked by a technological revolution driven by the convergence of the data processing industry with the consumer electronics industry. The effect has, in turn, driven technologies which have been known and available but relatively quiescent over the years. A major one of these technologies is the Internet or Web related distribution of documents including media and programs. The convergence of the electronic entertainment and consumer industries with data processing exponentially accelerated the demand for wide ranging communication distribution channels, and the Web or Internet, which had quietly existed for over a generation as a loose academic and government data distribution facility, reached “critical mass” and commenced a period of phenomenal expansion. With this expansion, businesses and consumers have direct access to all matter of documents including media and computer programs. In addition, Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), which had been the documentation language of the Internet or Web for years, offered direct links between Web pages. This even further exploded the use of the Internet or Web.
Web documents are provided from a Web distribution site usually made up of one or more server computers which access the document from a resource database in response to a user request sent over the Web through a Web browser on the user's receiving Web station. Significant Web distribution sites are made up of a plurality of server computers coordinated through a primary one of said servers. Such significant Web distribution sites usually serve large institutions such as corporations, universities, retail stores or governmental agencies. These distribution sites may also provide to smaller businesses or organizations support for and distribution of individual Web pages created, owned and hosted by the individual small businesses and organizations.
In such Web distribution sites, each of the Web documents or pages are assigned to one of the server computers which supports and distributes the respective Web documents or pages. These server computers are usually of different computer powers. The above-referenced copending application covers a system in which hit rates for the Web documents distributed through the site are monitored and server computer resources are allocated to meet surges in hit rates for the various Web documents by designating the server computers for said respective Web documents based upon said rate of user hits. The server computers of the most computer power are designated for the Web documents having the highest hit rate. This permits some optimizing of server computer resources at the Web distribution site.
Because of the rapidly expanding potential of Web documents and the varied consumer and business demands for a wide variety of data from Web documents, it is not unusual for hosts or owners who control the contents of many source Web documents to change such contents on a daily if not on an hourly basis. Of course, Web document content may be varied dramatically from simple HTML text to relatively complex animated images using the JPEG format. Thus, a Web document which is completely manageable by its designated server today may be greatly upgraded tomorrow so that its designated server may be strained to virtual inoperability.